Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 01 December 2021
I rise for the Liberal Democrats to offer our support for the motion in the name of Anas Sarwar. I echo the condolences that have been offered to everyone who has been affected by the tragedies at the hospital.
It is rare that the leaders of all Opposition parties attend such a debate, but the topic that we are discussing is of such public importance, with feelings running deep in our society, that we have all been compelled to lead for our parties.
It is dismaying, then, that the First Minister has not found an hour in her diary to attend Parliament to address the problems at the hospital—a hospital that she commissioned and that serves patients in her own constituency, and one in which problems have gone unaddressed on her watch. I find that contemptible.
Three years ago, we learned about serious safety and cleanliness issues at the QEUH, ranging from grime-damaged facilities to contaminated supplies. At the time, I and others urged that the hospital be put under the closest of surveillance. Evidently, that did not happen. The hospital was opened in 2015 and its construction alone cost £842 million. As we have heard, it was heralded as a superhospital, built to provide the most excellent and efficient healthcare to those who need it.
Ever since its creation, the Queen Elizabeth university hospital has been troubled by problems embedded in the very fabric of the building. Similar problems put a stop to the opening of the new hospital for sick kids in Edinburgh, and millions of pounds and 18 months were spent on putting those problems right. The problems were caught just before the sick kids hospital came into operation, but the problems at QEUH emerged only one by one, in the years after it opened, and they emerged because they were allowed to have a catastrophic impact on patient health.
The failures in standards are shameful, and the fact that such failures have led to loss of life is unforgivable. We have already heard about Andrew Slorance, who was a father of five and a dedicated public servant. Milly Main was just 10 years old when she passed away in the paediatric hospital. Last week, we learned about two other deaths of children possibly linked to infections in that hospital. As the father of three young children, my stomach turns just thinking about that. When anybody uses the hospitals in our country, they entrust their own lives and the lives of the people they care about into the hands of others. No one should expect their life to be endangered—or even lost—not by the condition that they were seeking help for, but by the place of treatment.
Enough is enough. Now is the time for decisive action, which is why the Scottish Liberal Democrats support Scottish Labour’s motion. Those who are responsible must be held accountable, and the NHS board must be escalated to stage 5, accompanied by additional oversight and checks to prevent any further risk to life.
This is not a criticism of NHS staff—anyone who says otherwise is gaslighting those same staff. As Dr Christine Peters said on Twitter last night, the NHS staff working at the Queen Elizabeth university hospital have acted with the utmost compassion, bravery and self-sacrifice, aware that the fabric of the building in which they were operating was harming the patients whom they were trying to support. They deserve our utmost respect, but they, too, have been egregiously let down by mismanagement. It is only because of whistleblowers that we have some of the information that we do have.
As I mentioned, Dr Christine Peters took to social media last night to tell us about the reviews into the whistleblowing. The so-called independent review did not look at a culture of bullying in the health board. Those are the things that we need to uncover. Those are the things that deserve our attention.
We should be very clear about what has caused the scandal: failure of management and of leadership, both by Greater Glasgow and Clyde NHS Board and an SNP Government that has been complacent in presiding over one of the worst scandals in the history of devolution.
Although it will not make up for the grief, disappointment and anguish that has been created, the very least that this Government could do is prove that it cares by supporting the motion and acting swiftly.